okay top five tma door motif moments:
- “it’s polite to knock” in a guest for mr spider (mag 81), the passive voice of the statement making it neither a question nor an order, removing any sense of either having or lacking agency
- elias saying something like “on a thousand thresholds, you pushed on” in mag 92, again equating doors with choice and making it seem like jon chose to become the archivist
- the door being locked in mag 101. jon straight up chose to die rather than be part of ending the world, the exact choice everyone (including him) blames him for not making in his coma, but it didn’t matter. that option turned out to never have been available to him in the first place. the illusion of free will babey.
- “they have to open my door, I can’t just push them in” (mag 146). bro this is my whole thing it’s my whole deal. the strange hazy grey area of what is and isn’t a choice. yes eventually only you can open a door for yourself, but if your world has been carefully shaped around you to take away more and more of your options, is it really up to you?
- “I open the door” (mag 160), the most clear example of agency being taken out of one’s hands. here jon is quite literally having his body and voice physically controlled, but still afterwards everyone (including himself) points to him as the one responsible for the apocalypse.